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trates into the depths of the woods . His joints are well strung ; he is a stranger to fatigue He rushes down the precipice , and inounts ' agaiii with ease , as though he had the wings of a bird He ruminates , and pursues his own trains of reflection and discovery , ' exhausting worlds , ' as it appears to him , ' and then imagining new . ' He hovers on the brink of the deepest philosophy , inquiring , How came I here , and to what end ? He becomes a
castle-builder , constructing imaginary colleges and states , and searching out the businesses in which they are to be employed , and the schemes by which they are to be regulated . He thinks what he would do , if he possessed uncontroulable strength , if lie could fly , if he could make himself invisible In this train of mind he cons his first lessons of liberty and independence . He learns selfreverence , and says to himself , I also am an artist and a maker . He ruffles himself under the yoke , and feels that he suffers foul tyranny when he is driven , and when brute force is exercised upon him to compel him to a certain course , or to chastise his faults , imputed or real . "—Pp . 168—171 .
Such is the schoolboy , whether his dreams be of a park , or of a farm , or of the humblest roof which he may call his own in the darkest alley of the < ity . Such are his efforts , whether his aims be lofty or low . Such are the stirrings of his spirit , whether or not they are doomed to be laid to an ignoble rest . But here the companionship of minds is at an end . It is decreed by society that though some few may have scope and uninterrupted impulse to action , the great majority must forego their leisure , ( a precious possession which every one should share , ) relinquish their higher aims , banish their
imaginings , and employ the energies which ought to be immortal in producing that which can never be more than means to an end , and the production of which presently requires no energy at all . For a certain period of time , and in some cases for a permanence , an intellectual life , more or less vigorous , may be preserved by happy domestic influences , by casual associations with higher minds ; but the lot of myriads is to be debarred by their outward circumstances from any intellectual progress ; to be bidden by ( heir fellow-men to " stand and wait" till the hour comes for their admission
into a society where there is no respect of persons , no spiritual subservience , no bondage of the spirit any more than of the limbs . Great as is our pleasure in seeing what man can do under favourable influences , we have , in the present state of things , more satisfaction in witnessing the efforts made by humbler agents to perpetuate the stimulus under which they once promised themselves great things . Greatly as we respect the researches of the closet , and admire the eloquence of the senate , and love the amenities of the most refined domestic intercourse , we turn from all these to enjoy the sight of any of those associations by which the lower classes keep up their sympathies with their race , and save tbeir intellects from extinction . However little
such associations may effect in comparison with those which subsist among the better educated , they are of incalculable worth in the absence of those higher institutions which must every where succeed them . — We have , in the work before us , two fine descriptions of the influences of oral communication , appropriate to the different classes we have been referring to . If the first be true , if fireside or public discussions have the effect described on cultivated minds , we may reason from this in defence of such associations as are the subject of the second .
" Inestimable as is the benefit we derive from books , there is something more searching and soul-stirring in oral communication . We cannot shut our ears as we shut our books ; we cannot escape from the appeal of the man who addresses us with earnest speech and living conviction . It is thus , we nre told , that when Cicero pleaded before Caesar for the life of Ligarius , the
Untitled Article
Godwin ' s Thoughts on Man . 437
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1831, page 437, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2599/page/5/
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